COFFEY, Wayne (Eric Ryerson, a pseudonym)

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Westchester County, NY. Office—c/o New York Daily News, 450 West 33rd St., Third Floor, New York, NY 10001.

CAREER:

New York Daily News, New York, NY, sportswriter.

WRITINGS:

How We Choose a Congress (for juveniles), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1980.

(With Michael Schatzki) Negotiation, the Art of Getting What You Want, New American Library (New York, NY), 1981.

303 of the World's Worst Predictions, illustrated by Steven DuQuette, Tribeca Communications (New York, NY), 1983.

All-Pro's Greatest Football Players (for young adults), Scholastic (New York, NY), 1983.

(Under pseudonym Eric Ryerson) When Your Parent Drinks Too Much: A Book for Teenagers, Facts on File (New York, NY), 1985.

Straight Talk about Drinking: Teenagers Speak out about Alcohol, New American Library (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Faye Young Miller) Winning Basketball for Girls, photographs by Don Haderman and others, Facts on File (New York, NY), 1992, third edition, 2002.

Jesse Owens (for juveniles), illustrated by Mike Eagle, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1992.

Katarina Witt (for juveniles), illustrated by Mike Eagle, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1992.

Kip Keino (for juveniles), illustrated by Richard Smolinski, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1992.

Olga Korbut (for juveniles), illustrated by Ed Vebell, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1992.

Jim Thorpe (for juveniles), illustrated by David Taylor, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1993.

Carl Lewis (for juveniles), Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1993.

Wilma Rudolph (for juveniles), Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1993.

1980 U.S. Hockey Team (for juveniles), illustrated by Richard Smolinski, Blackbirch Press (Woodbridge, CT), 1993.

(With Filip Bondy) Dreams of Gold: The Nancy Kerrigan Story, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1994.

The Kobe Bryant Story (for juveniles), Scholastic (New York, NY), 1999.

Meet the Women of American Soccer: An Inside Look at America's Team, photographs by Michael Stahlschmidt, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1999.

Winning Sounds like This: A Season with the Women's Basketball Team at Gallaudet, the World's Only Deaf University, photographs by Brian Morris, Crown (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sports reporter Wayne Coffey has written several nonfiction books on prominent athletes and some on other topics, including the U.S. government and teen drinking. Many of his works are aimed at young people, such as his series of biographies of Olympic athletes. Some of the competitors profiled in this series are Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens, Olga Korbut, and the 1980 U.S. men's hockey team. Concerning the biography Jim Thorpe, School Library Journal contributor Elaine Fort Weischedel observed that Coffey "does a good job" telling the story of this great multisport athlete's achievements, as well as of the career controversies and personal troubles that marked Thorpe's life. For instance, Coffey deals with Thorpe's drinking problem "briefly and compassionately," she wrote. Coffey's book 1980 U.S. Hockey Team, meanwhile, "conveys a good sense of the near-hysteria" surrounding the team's gold medal win, Weischedel related.

Aimed at a general readership is another sports chronicle, Winning Sounds like This: A Season with the Women's Basketball Team at Gallaudet, the World's Only Deaf University. The book following the players through the 1999-2000 season, during which the team made it to the semifinals of its conference championship. Coffey demonstrates how deaf athletes differ from hearing ones and how they do not; their sign-language communications create what Coffey calls a surreal, silent world that may baffle their opponents, but the spirit of competition is the same among the deaf and the hearing. He also provides a history of education for the deaf and an exploration of deaf culture; he reports that the players and most of their fellow Gallaudet students do not mind not being able to hear—they do not see themselves as needing to be "fixed." The result is less a book about basketball than one about "trying, achieving and living with a condition most of us would consider a handicap but one that the athletes in question don't," wrote Dick Heller in the Washington Times. Indeed, commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Coffey makes deafness appear "less alien than the big egos of Division I and the salaries of the NBA." Library Journal critic Kathy Ruffle remarked that "readers come away with a great respect for these players," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer summed up the book as "a great story in a good storyteller's hands." Heller noted, "The word 'inspiring' is frequently overused, but no other serves as well to describe Wayne Coffey's Winning Sounds like This. "

Coffey's non-sports writings include How We Choose a Congress and Straight Talk about Drinking: Teenagers Speak out about Alcohol, both designed for young audiences. The former explains the electoral process "in simple terms, but not simplistically," in the opinion of Booklist contributor William Bradley Hooper. Straight Talk about Drinking features interviews with fifty teenagers who have a variety of perspectives on the subject: some drink, some do not, some have alcoholics in the family. Coffey, who describes himself as a moderate drinker, also writes about his experience of having an alcoholic mother and provides information generally aimed at helping teenagers make well-considered decisions about drinking. "The information is realistic—not all drinking is bad—but cautious," observed Martha Gordon in the School Library Journal. Voice of Youth Advocates reviewer Sue Rosenzweig noted that Coffey's call for responsible decision-making "is not preachy," and "will be listened to by the readers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1980, William Bradley Hooper, review of How We Choose a Congress, p. 1392; September 15, 1988, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Straight Talk about Drinking: Teenagers Speak out about Alcohol, p. 146.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1980, review of How We Choose a Congress, p. 547.

Library Journal, February 15, 2002, Kathy Ruffle, review of Winning Sounds like This: A Season with the Women's Basketball Team at Gallaudet, the World's Only Deaf University, p. 152.

Publishers Weekly, June 10, 1988, review of Straight Talk about Drinking, p. 85; February 25, 2002, review of Winning Sounds like This, p. 53.

School Library Journal, November, 1988, Martha Gordon, review of Straight Talk about Drinking, pp. 135-136; September, 1993, Elaine Fort Weischedel, review of Jim Thorpe and 1980 U.S. Hockey Team, pp. 239-240.

Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 1984, Virginia Sankey, review of All-Pro's Greatest Football Players, p. 44; February, 1989, Sue Rosenzweig, review of Straight Talk about Drinking, p. 298.

Washington Times, April 1, 2002, Dick Heller, "Book on Gallaudet Inspirational Read," p. C4.*